Cheating Death
by Blue Sailor
Summary: Alternate POV of Mystery Spot. Dean dies over and over again, and Death steps in to reap him.


**A/N:** Inspired by a Tumblr comment.

* * *

I decide to intervene on the third Tuesday. Reality isn't a toy, and letting his brats play with it was one of God's more unfortunate ideas. I don't usually take it upon myself to discipline them, of course, but this one is making rather a nuisance of himself with this childish time loop prank. Dean Winchester has already died twice—four times depending on when you start counting—and I intend to make sure that this time is the last, even if it does mean taking time away from a small, war-torn country halfway around the globe to visit Florida in the off season, without a hurricane or a flood or even a heat wave in sight.

One of my reapers is already at the scene when I arrive, shadowing Dean as he walks down the street with his brother. Ahead, two movers are hoisting a heavy desk into the air with a rope. The sight sends a shivery tingle running through me. That's where it will happen.

"Thank you, Tessa," I say, and the reaper nods and steps aside, allowing me to take her place.

"So let's just make sure I don't die," Dean is saying, completely unaware of the irony about to unfold. He stops in the sidewalk and turns to face Sam as I approach. "If I make it to tomorrow, maybe the loop stops and we can figure all this out."

Above him, the rope holding the desk in the air groans and creaks. I can feel the fibers fraying and snapping, a stinging vibration over my skin.

"You think?" says Sam.

I could tell him not to bother getting his hopes up. They're about to be crushed—literally.

"It's worth a shot. I say we grab some takeout and head back to the motel, lay low until midnight," says Dean. Sam nods, and Dean nods back. He doesn't look up, to where the desk is now dangling from a few threads. "All right, good. Who wants Chinese?"

He sets off down the sidewalk again just as the rope breaks, sharp and sudden. I don't bother to watch the desk fall. Even the most rudimentary human physicist would be able to figure out that Dean's trajectory will put him directly underneath it when it crashes to the ground.

A loud bang, and then I hear Dean's voice again. It's not the reassuring tone he was just using with his brother; he sounds scared now. Which is as it should be.

"Sam? _Sam?"_

I look up. Sam is still standing on the sidewalk, looking horrified, staring straight through Dean's spiritual form, while Dean flaps a hand in his face in an attempt to get a reaction.

"Sam can't hear you," I say calmly.

Dean looks at me, his eyes wild. "What the hell happened?" he demands. He turns on the spot, taking in the the splintered desk on the ground, the splatters of gore on the sidewalk and walls. "Did I just—did I just get pancaked?"

"That's certainly one way to describe it," I say, surveying the wreckage.

Dean is shaking his head. "No, no, no. I told Sammy I wouldn't die today."

As if that means anything to me. "Then you shouldn't have made an archangel angry," I shrug. "They can be incredibly petty."

"Archangel?" He's frowning, confused. I feel it's best not to elaborate. The Winchesters have seen a lot more than most humans do, but they're still only human, and humans don't tend to react well to the news of what's waiting outside the walls of their little terrarium.

"Who are you, anyway?" Dean asks after a moment. "My reaper?"

I smile thinly. "I'm _the_ reaper."

"Oh. You're...Death?"

I keep the smile in place. It's usually enough to make even the most unruly souls back down, but Dean crosses his arms and meets my gaze squarely—bold for someone who just got pancaked.

"Well, look, I'm going to have to ask you to make an exception, here," he says. I raise my eyebrows at him, and he swallows and adds, "Sir."

They all ask me that, of course, but it's particularly irritating—not to mention arrogant—coming from Dean Winchester, who's already had more exceptions made for him than God allowed his own son. I'm beginning to see why Gabriel wasn't satisfied with killing the boy just once.

"And why should I do that?" I ask.

"Because I was supposed to have a year," says Dean. His face is set stubbornly. "That was the deal I made. One year. I've been counting on it."

"Counting on it to get out of the deal, you mean," I say shrewdly, and he looks at me, wide-eyed, like a betrayed toddler. "The thing is, Dean," I continue before he can say anything, "you're already living on borrowed time, and you can't keep taking out loans and never paying them back. They add up."

Dean is shaking his head again before I've even finished speaking, apparently not taking in a word. "You're not playing fair," he says. Now he's not only a betrayed toddler, he's a petulant one, too.

"No?" I ask. "I've allowed you and your brother to play Godzilla with the natural order. You have no idea of the disruption it's caused. And now you think you shouldn't have to pay for the damages?"

"I'm just trying to look out for Sam."

"Stop trying," I advise him firmly. "That's not your job anymore. You're dead."

Dean turns back to the sidewalk, where Sam is now crouching, teary-eyed, beside his remains. "It's okay, Dean. It's okay," he's babbling. "We'll try again tomorrow. Or today. Whatever. You're right, we'll just keep trying, eventually we'll make it to Wednesday…."

Dean grins. "That's my boy," he says softly, before facing me again.

"See? I won't be dead for long, sucker," he says smugly. "Sam and I'll figure this out."

"I'm afraid you're both rather missing the point, Dean," I say. Then I reach out a hand, and reap him.

My plan was to go next to the angel, and put a stop to the time loop, but I decide to let the game continue after all. It might be childish, but it's teaching the Winchesters an important lesson they clearly need to learn.

You can't cheat death.

*S*P*N*

It rankles to see Dean alive when Tuesday starts up again, especially when I could so easily have held onto him, but it's for a greater purpose. I'm very much hoping that today's lesson will sink in a bit better, for both pupils.

I trail behind Sam and Dean as they step into a diner. Gabriel is there, sitting at the bar. He gives me a knowing smile and a wink, clearly very pleased with himself, and slides a plate of deliciously artery-clogging onion-and-jalapeno home fries along the bar towards me. Being in Florida certainly does have its compensations. I'm almost sorry that I'll be returning to that small war-torn country soon. The food in America is really to die for.

"'Scuse me, sweetheart?" Dean calls to the waitress from the booth behind us. "Can I get sausage instead of bacon?"

"Sure thing, hon," the waitress replies.

"See?" I hear Dean say to Sam, as she brings their food to the table. "Different day already. If you and I decide I'm not gonna die—I'm not gonna die."

He's speaking in the same reassuring tone he used yesterday, and is just as unaware of the irony. I expect Sam to contradict him—surely he's been through enough Tuesdays by now to realize that a different breakfast won't be enough to forestall fate. But when I turn to look, he's wearing exactly the same hopeful expression that he had yesterday, just before the desk fell. Apparently all it takes is a word from Dean to make him disregard all common sense.

I watch Dean take a bite of sausage, watch his throat flex as he swallows. I remember God fashioning the respiratory system, wondering if it would be a design flaw to connect the esophagus and the trachea to a common orifice.

Personally, I always thought it was a stroke of genius.

"Dean? _Dean?_ " Sam cries out suddenly. He starts up from his seat, panicked, but it's already too late. Dean's body slumps forward over the table, and his spirit materializes next to me.

"Sam," he sputters between reflexive gasps and coughs.

"Nice try, Dean," I say, mopping grease from my plate with the last few fries.

He turns to look at me, then at the people now surrounding the booth where he and Sam were sitting. The waitress is standing closest to us, crying, holding a phone to her ear with a trembling hand. Sam is only half-visible behind the crush of people, but it's clear that his shoulders are also shaking with sobs.

"Aw, crap," says Dean softly, his eyes on Sam. "I thought that was gonna work."

I say nothing, hoping that he'll figure it out on his own—but my hope turns out to be as vain as Sam's.

"You're my reaper, huh?" Dean says, looking back to study me. "Couldn't you give me a do-over?"

It's been several millennia, at least, since a human soul caused me to roll my eyes, but I find myself doing it now. "Why?" I ask. "Even if you break out of the time loop, that deal of yours will be coming due in a few months."

Dean licks his lips, and glances over his shoulder to where EMTs are now arriving, placing his body onto a stretcher. One of them is helping Sam to his feet, patting him on the back while he stares, red-eyed, at nothing. "I can't leave Sam alone. I gotta be here to look out for him."

I get slowly to my feet, facing him. "You should have thought of that before you made the deal."

His eyes, so wide and pleading a moment ago, narrow. "I _was_ thinking of that when I made the deal. Why the hell else would I have made it?"

"You made the deal; you chose a different breakfast," I say. "Either way, the outcome is the same." I take a step towards him, keeping my gaze locked on his. "You have to let Sam go."

He clenches his jaw, stubborn. "That's never gonna happen."

I smile. "Oh yes it will, Dean. Sooner or later."

This time when I lift a hand to reap him, he lurches backwards, trying to avoid my touch. It's just as fruitless a gesture as the different breakfast was, though; I make contact, and he passes on in a rush of heat and a faint whiff of sulphur. I sigh, and turn back to the bar to order another plate of fries. Looks like the war-torn country will have to wait.

*S*P*N*

After that, Sam stops letting Dean out of their motel room. He forgets, however, that while he can prevent Dean from going out, he can't prevent me from getting in. Dean cracks his skull slipping in the shower, is electrocuted plugging in his razor, cuts his radial artery cleaning their collection of knives, breaks his neck trying to sneak past Sam out of the room via their second-story window.

This particular Tuesday, Sam has ordered tacos for their lunch from a cheap but decidedly unsavory stand in the alley next door. I order some too, and eat one while I watch them. It's full of carcinogenic fats and high fructose corn syrup, which is all very appealing, but I can taste something even better laced through the taco Dean unwraps.

"Do these tacos taste funny to you?" Dean asks Sam around a large mouthful. Sam just shrugs at him, and they continue eating in silence.

I watch them, equally silent. Dean chews his way through two more tacos, unaware as usual of his own impending doom. I can feel it, though, dissolving slowly in his stomach, malicious molecules creeping towards his bloodstream.

Sam is in the bathroom when it happens. Dean lifts a fourth taco to his mouth, inhales in preparation of taking a bite, finds his airway blocked. Within seconds, his face flushes bright red and the tendons in his neck stand out, straining. He slides out of his chair and onto the floor, his lips moving soundlessly.

"Sam," Dean's spirit gasps, half-sobbing when it finally materializes, his words audible now that he doesn't need breath to utter them. He notices his own body lying at his feet, stumbles backwards, and freezes when he spots me.

"Taco?" I offer pleasantly, holding up the paper bag I got from the little stand in the alley.

"Where's Sam?"

"Still alive."

"Son of a bitch," Dean swears, looking back down at his body. "I _knew_ that taco didn't taste right."

The handle on the bathroom door rattles. Sam is coming out.

"Time to go, Dean," I say, setting the paper bag down and advancing towards him.

He looks from me to the bathroom door and back again.

"What? No, I can't leave. Sammy—"

"—will just have to get along without you," I say. Dean tries to say something else, but I reap him before he can form a word. Interrupting is impolite, but I know from experience it will save a lot of tedious carrying on if I don't let Dean watch Sam discover his body.

Sam comes out of the bathroom a second later, and sees his brother's corpse. It's the thirty-seventh Tuesday in a row he's seen Dean die, but he still cries as if it's the very first time.

*S*P*N*

And so it goes. Dean is shot twenty-four times with bullets of various caliber, and once with an arrow. He has twelve heart attacks and three strokes. His heart is punctured by fifteen different objects, his lungs by nine. Carotid artery severed eleven times. Femoral five times. Suffocated. Crushed. Decapitated. Electrocuted. Poisoned.

The human brain might be one of God's clunkier models, but Sam's is in top condition, and he should really have learned his lesson long before now. I'm a patient being, but I have a natural order to restore, a war-torn country to return to, and I'm beginning to despair of either Sam or Dean ever letting go of the other. They're as tightly bound as God and I once were, back in the beginning, when we created and destroyed in perfect balance, when we were all each other had, when the only things God made for me to reap were planets and stars.

*S*P*N*

On the hundredth Tuesday, Dean is mauled by a dog while Sam chases down a woman handing out fliers on the street. His spirit materializes from the shreds of his body, and I wait for him to ask where Sam is, as he always does.

He doesn't, though. He just stands there, staring, while the dog gnaws gleefully on an exposed rib, its muzzle stained a deep scarlet, blood and entrails soaking the sidewalk under its feet.

"Hellhounds would have been much worse, you know," I say after a moment.

Dean's eyes remain fixed on the dog, and his own disemboweled corpse. "I know," he says quietly.

Silence again for a while. Again, I'm the one to break it.

"Consider yourself lucky," I tell him. "You're getting off easy."

His shoulders twitch a bit, and his lips press together. "I know," he repeats, still in that same quiet tone.

I raise my eyebrows. "Do you?"

"Yeah, I do," says Dean, his voice stronger now. "Even if I don't get out of the deal, I get to die first. Win-win." He laughs, short and harsh. "Sam had a point when he said I was selfish."

I just have time to think that Dean might be learning a valuable lesson after all before he finally looks up at me, blinks a few times, and frowns.

"Do I know you? You look familiar."

"We've had dealings," I say, looking at him steadily.

He seems to think about that a moment, then lifts one corner of his mouth in a sad little smile. "I guess not the kind of dealings that would get the rest of my year back?"

"Sorry, Dean. I'm just doing my job."

His smile disappears, and he looks back down at the dog and the remains of its meal on the ground. "Yeah. Me too."

*S*P*N*

Not long after that, Dean is shot for the sixty-eighth time this week, and bleeds out in the motel parking lot while Sam cradles him in his arms, sobbing, just like all the other times. And just like all the other times, Dean's spirit materializes calling his brother's name, and when I move to reap him he makes all the same protests, arguments, and pleas as he always does.

But this isn't like all the other times, because today is Wednesday. I won't be giving Dean back this time.

Gabriel's won his little game, and that war-torn country is waiting for me, but I stay right where I am, watching Sam Winchester kneeling awkwardly on the blacktop, sobbing over his brother's body, murmuring over and over, "Not today. Not today."

I wonder if this is how I'll feel, when I finally reap God, and I'm well and truly alone. I hope not. I think I would reap myself rather than suffer like this.

*S*P*N*

Gabriel finds me six months later, walking along a dusty roadside in that little war-torn country.

"You were right," he says, falling into step beside me. "That game turned out not so fun after all."

"I trust you've learned that reality isn't meant to be used as a baby rattle?" I ask, not bothering to stop and look at him. I can smell the faint tang of an IED nestled in the dust just ahead, can feel the vibrations of an armored vehicle rumbling closer and closer to the target zone, and that's much more interesting than a belated half-apology.

"I concede I may have overdone this one," Gabriel admits carelessly. "That's why I'm resetting back to Wednesday."

Now I do stop and turn towards him. "You want me to give Dean Winchester back."

"Um, yeah," says Gabriel, looking a little nervous now. "Only way Sam's gonna lay off me."

"So he never learned the lesson, did he? The whole thing was a waste of time."

"Well, it wasn't a waste of _time,_ " says Gabriel impertinently. "Effort, maybe, but—" He breaks off. "Look, I just feel bad for them, okay?"

"Feeling bad doesn't change the fact that Dean Winchester is supposed to be dead, and was already supposed to be dead long before Wednesday," I say sharply. "Bringing him back would—"

"Yeah, I know, the natural order, yada yada," says Gabriel. He rolls his eyes. I'm convinced God created these angels just to irritate me. "Just watch, okay?" he continues, raising his hand. "I think you'll change your mind."

He snaps his fingers, and the arid desert disappears. I'm standing in a motel room I came to know very well over the course of hundreds of Tuesdays. An equally familiar song is blaring from the clock radio on the bedside table. Sam is sitting up in bed, staring at the radio.

"It's Wednesday," he says softly, wonderingly.

"Yeah, usually comes after Tuesday." Dean's voice sounds loud and brazen from the other side of the room. "Turn that thing off."

The expression on Sam's face as he scrambles off the bed, crosses the room in three long strides, and wraps his arms tightly around his brother is beyond definition. I can't name it, but I know what it means—I know that it's rarer than spontaneous human combustion, more beautiful than a supernova. And I can't help feeling as though everything is suddenly right with the world.

It isn't, of course. The natural order is still dangerously out of balance, and these boys, not to mention that wretched angel, still need to be taught a serious lesson.

But I'm willing to let them cheat a little.


End file.
